ModelRefs / Claude 3 Opus vs Gemma 3 27B
Claude 3 Opus vs Gemma 3 27B
Claude 3 Opus vs Gemma 3 27B: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Claude 3 Opus: Claude 3 Opus is Anthropic's February 2024 frontier model and the most capable of the original Claude 3 family, accepting text and image input across a 200,000-token context window. The claude-3-opus-20240229 snapshot was deprecated on 30 June 2025 and retired on Anthropic-operated platforms on 5 January 2026, with Claude Opus 4.8 named as its replacement.
Gemma 3 27B: Gemma 3 27B is the largest model in Google's third-generation open Gemma family, accepting text and images across a 128,000-token input context, with output drawn from the same budget. Images are normalised to 896x896 and encoded as 256 tokens each. Google cites support for more than 140 languages and an August 2024 knowledge cutoff. The weights are published under Google's Gemma Terms of Use rather than a standard open-source licence.
Context window: Claude 3 Opus accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Gemma 3 27B up to 128,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Claude 3 Opus vs Gemma 3 27B at a glance
| Attribute | Claude 3 Opus | Gemma 3 27B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | |
| Released | 2024-02-29 | 2025-02-01 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input price | $15/M tokens | $0.1/M tokens |
| Output price | $75/M tokens | $0.3/M tokens |
| Licence | Proprietary | Gemma-Terms |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Reasoning: Claude 3 Opus 38%, Gemma 3 27B 68%. Gemma 3 27B leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Claude 3 Opus vs Gemma 3 27B.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude 3 Opus or Gemma 3 27B?
Claude 3 Opus and Gemma 3 27B target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Claude 3 Opus cheaper than Gemma 3 27B?
Compare $0.0150 vs $0.00010 on this page.